China Daily
45 airports will be built, 700 planes to join the fleet as blueprint drafted
BEIJING - China plans to invest 1.5 trillion
yuan ($228.2 billion) in the aviation industry, building 45 airports
and adding 700 new commercial planes, over the next five years to meet
surging demand, a top regulator said on Thursday.
The figure is half a trillion yuan more than
that for the previous five years, Li Jiaxiang, head of the Civil
Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), told a news conference.
By 2015, the country is expected to have 220
commercial airports and its fleet size will expand to more than 4,500
planes, according to Li.
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| Li Jiaxiang, head of CAAC |
"The ability of the civil aviation sector to serve the national economy and the public will be further strengthened," Li said.
The country currently has 175 commercial airports in operation and keeps more than 2,600 aircraft in its fleet, he said.
In the next five years, the commercial
aircraft fleet, which stood at more than 1,600 in 2010, will expand by
some 700 planes, a scale similar to the growth in the past five years.
The number of commercial airports will
increase by 45, mostly regional, in the next five years, compared with
the 33 new airports completed in the past five years.
Despite concerns over losses reported by
many regional airports, the construction process will be speeded up
over the next five years, he said.
Li admitted that 130 out of the 175
airports reported "a rather small amount" in losses last year, totaling
1.68 billion yuan. But "regional airports are public infrastructures,
and their construction should not be profit-driven", he said.
Besides, regional airports have brought
large economic and social benefits to local communities, which "is why
many local
governments are still willing to subsidize their operations, despite losses", he said.
governments are still willing to subsidize their operations, despite losses", he said.
The airport in Huai'an, Jiangsu
province, which opened for operations in 2010, has attracted 61
foreign-invested companies to settle in the city, while an airport in
remote Tengchong county in Yunnan province boosted local tourism, with
the county's GDP rising 56 percent since it opened in 2009.
Also, after a magnitude 7.1 earthquake
shook Yushu in Qinghai province, killing 2,687 people, the local airport
played a major role in disaster relief. Airlines transported nearly
3,000 injured people for treatment and prevented the death toll from
rising further, he said.
As proof of the enthusiasm of local
governments to develop civil aviation, he said top officials from 29
provinces and regions visited the CAAC last year to discuss building
airports and opening new routes.
Li Lei, a civil aviation analyst at
CITIC China Securities, said the increase in the number of airports will
also benefit the entire industry.
"With more airports built, it will drive market demand for civil aviation."
Besides building more airports and
increasing the fleet, the CAAC will also take measures to strengthen
airline competitiveness in the international transportation market over
the next five years, Li Jiaxiang said.
He cited statistics saying that foreign
airlines are gaining an upper hand in the country's lucrative
international travel market.
Statistics showed domestic airlines
account for only 46 percent of China's international passenger market
and less than 30 percent of China's international cargo market.
The administration will boost the
industry's overall strength by nourishing large-scale aviation hubs and
super-network carriers, he said, without elaborating.
Some analysts have expressed concerns
that State-controlled airlines are too well-supported and resourced, but
Li noted that the CAAC encourages the development of privately owned
airlines as well.
China has 43 airlines - eight privately owned or controlled and 35 State-controlled. Of these, 16 are joint ventures.
The CAAC will soon accept three applications for establishing private airlines, he said.
Demand for air traffic is booming as the
world's second-largest economy roars ahead on near double-digit growth
and increasingly affluent Chinese people travel more frequently.
A total of 267 million air passenger
trips were recorded in China in 2010, up 15.8 percent from the previous
year, official figures showed.
Domestic airlines reaped profits
totaling 35.1 billion yuan in 2010, accounting for 60 percent of the
world's total, CAAC statistics showed.
The rapid development has benefited
foreign aviation industry players as well, amid a huge demand for
aircraft and airport facilities, according to Li.
Of the 200 billion yuan in commercial
deals China made in November when President Hu Jintao visited France,
104.1 billion yuan was spent on civil aviation-related goods.
Also, when President Hu visited the
United States in January, $19 billion out of the total $45 billion in
commercial deals was spent in the aviation sector.
